Preme Says Drake Rewrites His Verses Up To 20 Times

“If there’s one thing I learned from that guy, man, it’s really to push yourself and never settle.”

Drake has been dogged with ghostwriting rumors ever since Meek Mill claimed the Toronto rapper’s verse on their collaboration “R.I.C.O.” was written by Quentin Miller. To hear Drake’s frequent collaborator Preme (f.k.a. P Reign) tell it, however, the OVO boss not only writes his own verses but spends endless hours rewriting them.

The way he approaches his music, it’s just so different. I’ve worked with everybody, but just the way he attacks music [is] so much more calculated than every other artist I’ve ever met… I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen somebody write… He writes. We’re from that old cloth where we take time and we want the highest quality of music possible… He was the first person I’ve ever seen sit down and rewrite one verse 20 times. Work on one verse for two weeks. And I’ll hear the verse and be like, ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.’ He’s like, ‘Nah, we gotta make it tighter.’ I don’t even understand how you took this to another level, so if there’s one thing I learned from that guy, man, it’s really to push yourself and never settle.

I come from the streets. He comes from a better part of Toronto [and a] television background, so I don’t think we were really going through the same things. I grew up hustling and doing the negativity and the things that’ll get you send to jail and he had a job. A respectable job, he was famous. I think he just means [that] being thrown into that lifestyle right away… You got to understand, he came up and signed to Lil Wayne. He probably had to learn a lot of things that he had no experience about really quick and for the fact he had a brother like me that you could call and lived that his entire life.

On the track, Drake says that he learned how to spot an undercover policeman from Preme:

My brother P-Reign knowsWe fuck with the same hoesPlus he taught me how to spot a officer in plain clothes

Back in 2017, Drake slightly touched on the accusations of ghostwriting during an interview with DJ Semtex. He was further defended by his frequent collaborator Boi-1da on the Rap Radar podcast, who called Drake “literally one of the greatest songwriters of all time.” Now, Preme has given more support to Drake’s contention that Meek Mill created a false narrative. While reference tracks of PARTYNEXTDOOR singing “Legend” and “Company” show Drake doesn’t write everything himself, there’s no denying his work ethic.